Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in Jamaica today where he became the first Canadian prime minister to speak to the Parliament of Jamaica. Before doing so, however, he participated in a conference call, organized by the Washington-based advocacy group The Israel Project, to which only U.S. reporters were invited. PMO calls to say that the conference call was organized by The Israel Project and that it was that group which decided which reporters to invite in on the call. PMO says some Canadian reporters were in on the call. In fact, an Ottawa-based Reuters reporter had the first question. PMO also notes that Harper frequently does interviews or press sessions with “ethnic” media while in Canada and that normally, there is little interest in these sessions from the MSM. To which I said, fair enough, but there might be more interest if the MSM knew about them. The rest of this post was written before those conversations with key PMO types occurred …
The Canadian Jewish News has this report:
“In a Monday-morning conference call with journalists organized by the Washington-based think-tank The Israel Project, Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated Canada’s denunciation of this week’s United Nations World Conference Against Racism. . . .
Harper said Canada was “leading the world in championing international understanding and pluralism” and also in its stance against anti-Semitism and racism “in all other forms. We’re very concerned that anti-Semitism is growing in volume and acceptance, justified by opposition to Israel itself.”
After canvassing some of my colleagues in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, I'm pretty sure no it seems few Canadian news organization were tipped about this call and, so far as I know, we only learned of it from our U.S. colleagues. I point this out only to say that I'm pretty sure Harper is not going to find many voters in the U.S. but there are some voters in Canada that, for better or worse, read, watch or listen to the output of the three hundred press gallery members (not all of which work for major outlets like Canwest News Service or CTV. Gallery members from smaller news organizations like the Canadian Catholic News and the Christian Current depend on the PMO distributing notices and information through the Press Gallery). You would think that, if Harper is taking a tough stand on anti-Semitism, it might be of interest to say, Jewish voters in Montreal or Toronto.
If he wants to talk to American reporters– fair enough, that's completely within his prerogative and it probably makes sense for a Canadian PM to do a little outreach with reporters from the U.S. and other key allies. But I'm a little confused why he and his staff want to keep that fact a secret from the rest of the country.
Anyhow, after asking a PMO communications aide this afternoon for a transcript of Harper's chat with reporters (the kind of transcript routinely published for all to see by both the Obama and Bush White House), I was provided with this link of an MP3 recording of the call. Anyone (Gabby from QC?) want to do the transcript?
The story has been published on-line and in print in the Canadian Jewish news, as you yourself point out. Do you not consider the CJN a legitimate Canadian news source?
Thanks for that information, Anonymous (please, get yourself a name).
Here's the link: http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16732&Itemid=86
Mr. Akin, I'll gladly do the transcript, but I only arrived here after midnight. The transcript might be stale by the time I finished doing it – the voices are not too clear, either. Anyway, I'll give it a go.
Oops, just noticed the link previously mentioned was already contained in your post.
Dave
Think on the bright side.
Maybe things will change and the Liberals will gain power and you and your colleagues can get back to the good old days when the Liberals will once again write your stories for you and all you have to do is go to the parties and put your little finger in the air, while eating tiny hot dogs, all at the taxpayers expense of course
David, as far as the discussions between the Prime Minister and media sources, I have to say that I have seen a very different atmosphere between American-performed interviews and Canadian-performed interviews.
I've noticed that American-performed interviews stay on topic, ask pertinent neutral questions, deal mostly with facts and does not discuss speculative issues.
Canadian-performed interviews by-and-large have not followed that formula. I've seen far too many interviews stray off topic into other issues trying to make some kind of link or association and delves frequently into gossip.
Also, in American-performed interviews, I've noticed a distinct difference in the respect for the Prime Minister that I haven't seen often enough in Canadian-performed interviews. In Canada, we feel that we need to drag our Prime Minister down to a more familiar or comfortable level that creates this image that our Prime Minister is just another one of “us”. Familiarity breeds contempt, and pulling the leader of our country down to our level makes it easier and more “comfortable” to tear them down and criticize them. As such, how can we expect the rest of the world to respect our Prime Minister as a World Leader, when they seems to be so casually disrespected domestically. How many times is our Prime Minister referred to as “Mr. Harper”, instead of “Prime Minister”. Conversely, how many times is the President of the United States referred to as “Mr. Obama” instead of “Mr. President”? Little things like that make a BIG difference in the circles where protocol means a great deal.
Criticizing a World Leader should never be a “comfortable” thing, and it should never be done casually or with careless abandon. These three things seem to be frequent in Canadian Media. As such, is it such a hard thing to understand that when a neighbor treats you with more respect than the people within your own household, that you'd rather spend more time talking to them?
I honestly think that the Canadian Media needs to do a little growing up, do a little more “suck-it-up buttercup”, and offer a little more respect to our own World Leader.